that faces a manure warehouse. This beacon is spindly, tall, of iron lattice work. And all beyond it the river runs as between high walls, shining with a more metallic glitter under smoke and the shadows of groves of masts, crane-arms, chains, cordage. A train of the large steamers lies heavy on the water, hooting signals to agents ashore, waiting at the dock gates for water enough to enter. This is Gallions Reach, and from here upwards London offers a solid black facing to its river. From here, too, the little companies of barges begin to break up. Some stop near the dock gates, some turn into the London canals. Some wait near Waterloo, some go far above the bridges. Here at any rate the river as a road into London ends. It is all the time a gray tide of work, a moving platform of workers.
Workers in London divide themselves, roughly, into those who sell the labour of their bodies and those who sell their attentions. You see men in the streets digging trenches, pulling stout wires out of square holes in pavements, pecking away among greasy vapours at layers of asphalte, scattering shovelfuls of crushed gravel under the hoofs of slipping horses and under the crunching tyres of wheels. If walls would fall out of offices you would see paler men and women adding up the records of money paid to these others. That, with infinite variations, is work in London.
You get the two things united here and there. The other day I was in Tilbury Docks. (It is difficult to get away from this river.) The vast, empty squares of
water lay parapeted, arbitrary and dim in their eternal
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